Many new types of communication systems have been made possible as a result of technological advancements in communication technologies. Mobile communications, for instance, have exhibited significant growth and mobile communication systems have been developed, deployed, and popularly used by many. Both telephonic and data communications are effectuable by way of a mobile communication system. While first used primarily for communication of short messages, such as e-mail messages, increasingly, the mobile communication systems are constructed to be capable of effectuating data communications to carry out data-intensive communication services and applications.
Push-message services, for instance, are provided in some data communication systems, including mobile communication systems. The communication of data pursuant to a push message service is advantageous in that the content that is communicated is caused to be delivered to a receiving communication device without particular action taken by the receiving communication device, or its user, to retrieve the content. When the content is pushed to the receiving communication device, its delivery is more timely than when communicated in a conventional request-response type of communication scheme. In such a scheme, communication of the content is delayed until a request is made by the receiving communication device for the delivery of the content.
Various proposals are under consideration by which to standardize various aspects of push content communications and additional proposals are solicited. For instance, the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Limited is promulgating a standardization document entitled, “Dynamic Content Delivery Requirements”. The document pertains, in part, to requirements and protocols associated with content for communication in a mobile communication system. The content delivery scheme pertains to various network technologies. And, in various aspects, the content delivery scheme is intended to enable an application and to provide for asynchronous push content.
Processing is required to be performed upon the content. Processing of the content requires time for its performance and completion. The processing time period is dependent, in part, upon the amount of content that is to be processed and upon the type and amount of processing that is to be performed upon content. The processing time required to process content is, if extensive, noticeable and deleteriously affects communication performance or a user's perception of the communication performance.
While background processing, i.e., processing operations performed when an application is inactive, is generally known, its implementation with respect to content communicated in a push content communication scheme, has not fully been investigated.
An improved manner by which better to provide for background processing of content communicated in a push content communication scheme is, therefore, needed.
It is in light of this background information related to the communication of push content that the significant improvements of the present invention have evolved.